Hw # 12- Feed A

In Feed by M. T. Anderson, the world has developed into an exaggerated replica of our world today. The book portrays life with the feed (an advanced computer implanted in your head). I actually came to realized that no matter how demented and over the top it sounds to have something that controls you in certain ways implanted and with you at all times that, that is something we are approaching.

Feeds in the book are like our digital world today. The feed includes texting (chat), information (internet), as well as advertisements (everywhere). The feeds allow people to become lazy and incompetent. If a person had to go a week without any digital exposure, they would most likely feel lost and not know what to do with themselves. M.T Anderson expresses this when Violet’s feed becomes hacked. “She just lay there. She still had the discs all over her. Someone had laid her arms outside of the sheets.” This just shows how in Feed, the characters were unable to function without their feeds.

I feel as though we are currently addicted in certain ways although we know that there are negative affects. We all know that computers act as a barrier and block our true feelings/emotions from being easily determined. We know that we may be talking to a person we dislike so we use aim or texting a s an excuse to write I hate you; but as long as you add “lol” to the end, it makes everything okay. We do it to others so we know that others are doing t to us but we ignore the fact. Without computers or phones, we would have control our facial expressions while talking and I don’t believe we have that control. We may also use a form of chat (texting or aim) to tell secrets. One thing we may not realize or attempt to ignore is that everything over the internet is saved and completely public if you know how to access it. In Feed, the feeds were able to provide them with answers and information; even when one came to a loss of words, they were able to acquire ideas from the feed. This has to mean that the feed was paying attention to their outside conversations in order to assist


I guess what I’m trying to say is that the world is ignorant; and although Feed may seem exaggerated, we have to judge ourselves before judging the book because judging the book is judging ourselves.

Hw # 11- Self Experiment

For my self experiment I went through the day with as little interaction with the digital world as possible. In all I believe I had about a half an hour of digital interaction. 15 minutes of watching the news in the morning and about 15 minutes relaxing in the the living room with my mom before I went to bed.
I actually felt this experiment was challenging but also informed me a lot about my daily living habits. At certain points of the day after I finished my homework, I found myself to be lost and not really knowing what to do so I always went to read a book but I eventually got bored. I soon figured that there were other non-digital things I could do so I went outside with my friend (from my building so that I didn’t have to use the phone) and we walked around and talked about life and school and everything. Now this wasn’t really new because we did go outside together a lot but one thing that was a little different was that when our conversation slowed down we would normally take out our phones, start texting other people and then talk about things they’d say. That was something I couldn’t do so we actually had to find more stuff to talk about and were more observant of what was around us.
One thing that I really noticed that it’s hard to separate yourself from the digital world when no one else does. Its like you are alone in this world that rarely includes the people you know. I don’t really know how to explain it but its like a group of people have to be together in the “real” world for the “real” world to be affective.